Rahul Bhatt, the son of renowned director Mahesh Bhatt and the aspiring bollywood actor who was supposed to make his debut with ‘Suicide Bomber’, is said to have denied that his friend David Coleman Headley was the same person whose image is being flashed by news channels.



Sources close to Bhatt family say that Rahul Bhatt’s mother, who had seen Headley at her home, has said that the two persons were not the same and his son was unnecessarily being dragged into all this. In fact, Headley, known to Rahul Bhatt, had introduced himself to be a veteran of Vietnam War, and they first met at Barista coffee shop in Bandra.



Pooja Bhatt, the elder sister of Rahul Bhatt, has also strongly defended her brother saying that it was he who had approached police after hearing the name of Headley, and not the police who caught him.

However, the police officials have refused to give clean chit to Rahul Bhatt in the matter of his links with LeT operative David Coleman Headley. Rahul Bhatt had introduced Headley to a real estate broker and helped him in getting a flat on rent in Breach Candy area of South Mumbai.

Rahul’s name came to light when American security agency FBI arrested Headley in Chicago and scanned his e-mails and other records. The name of Rahul had been mentioned in several of his emails to a Pakistan- based terrorist leader and there was also some talk of investment in Rahul’s city.

Now, the security agencies have decoded the term ‘investment’ in terrorists’ lingo, and clarified that it meant ‘target’. In one of the emails to Headley from Pakistan, some person, code named as ‘A’, had talked about investing in real estate, which put security agencies on their toes as that could have meant anyone from Rahul Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan to Rahul Bose, Rahul Dev and Rahul Khanna.

In the meantime, Mumbai police are investigating the angle of Headley doing personal recces of the Taj and Trident hotels before the terrorists attacked these places on 26 November 2008. Sources say that the police officials are also investigating if Rahul Bhatt had accompanied Headley to any of these places.

The investigating agencies feel that Rahul Bhatt’s company would have given Headley an access which he would not have been able to get otherwise. As Headley had shown himself to be working with an immigration firm owned by Rana(another accomplice), it would not have been difficult for him to meet his agents, who could  have come disguising as his clients.